Next Stop… Soweto Vol 2: Soul, Funk & Organ Grooves from the Townships 1969-76

All credit to compilers Duncan Brooker and Francis Gooding, for what they have done with this unusual and fascinating comp¬ilation is to unearth a genuinely underground movement in the history of South African music. Most of the 20 artists here get no mention in the standard reference works about South African music, such as Gwen Ansell's Soweto Blues, David Coplan's In Township Tonight, or the Rough Guide to World Music. They didn't record for the mighty Gallo but for obscure labels such as City Special and Soul Town. They didn't play in the familiar styles of mbaqanga or township jive but instead looked for inspiration to imported soul and funk records made in Memphis, Muscle Shoals and New Orleans. As a result they were dismissed by the arbiters of good taste as mere imitators. It is true that you would struggle to identify much of the music here as distinctively South African. Yet what emerges is not a picture of purely commercial imitation but the hidden history of what we can only describe as South African Afro-beat, a funked-up style developed in parallel to what Fela Kuti was doing around the same time in Lagos. Indeed, this music has far more in common with the music being recorded in West Africa in the early 70s and which has been brought to prominence in recent years on compilations from archive labels such as Soundway and Vampisoul. JK Mayengar and the Shingwedzi Sisters sound like they had been listening avidly to the work of Allen Toussaint and the Meters. The Heroes sound like Soweto's answer to Booker T & the MGs. Bra Sello feasts on the Memphis soul stew cooked up by the likes of King Curtis and Stax Records. The jazzier sound of the Klooks betrays the influence of Hammond B3 master Jimmy Smith. A handful of tracks combine American funk influences with more recognisably South African forms, such as the Mgababa Queens and the jazzy Heshoo Beshoo Band. But this really is South African music as you've seldom heard it before.